Exclusive: As she bares all for a nude photoshoot, 70s supermodel Marie Helvin talks candidly about growing older, drugs, younger men and her famous ex-lovers.

Marie Helvin looks incredible. Her skin is flawless and her figure still toned and sexy.

So it comes as no surprise that she’s recently shed her clothes for acclaimed photographer Rankin who’s compiling a book of iconic shots of beauties such as Lily Cole and Yasmin Le Bon.

“At first I wasn’t sure as I haven’t stripped off completely since my 20s,” she says.

“Sometimes I’ll see an old picture of me and think ‘I really had a great body’ but it doesn’t look like that now!

“But I know that I don’t have that many years left to do this so I decided to go for it.

“In the end I was so comfortable and liked Rankin so much that I was practically walking around naked!”

Marie has a long history in front of the camera. As one of the world’s first supermodels she did dozens of shoots for magazines such as Vogue and Harpers & Queen.

Her exotic olive skin and big brown eyes (her father was an American GI and her mother Japanese) attracted David Bailey who described her as having “the perfect body”.

They married and were together for 10 years until Marie grew tired of his infidelity.

Since then she’s been reluctant to settle down and instead is enjoying dating younger men.

“I’m at my sexual peak,” she laughs. “All my boyfriends are young,” she says. “I’ve never been asked out by someone my age. I would love to be asked, but they don’t!

“It’s always younger guys. I do have a limit though – maybe seven or eight years younger.

“I’ve been asked out by guys in their 20s. Are they insane? I’d never go out with someone that age. What in the world would I have to talk to them about?”

Marie, who says she’s never wanted children, is adamant she won’t marry again.

“I wouldn’t mind being in a relationship but there’s no reason to marry,” she says. “I like living on my own. I’m happy for a man to come over, I’ll cook for him, he can spend the night occasionally but then I want him to leave. I’m too independent.”

Today she is showing off glowing skin that completely belies her age. She uses and promotes a product called Stop which focuses four low-power beams into the dermis to stimulate collagen production.

“These days there’s too much emphasis on women having to look a certain way,” she says. “I’m 56 – I don’t want to look like I’m 20.

“Kim Basinger is incredibly beautiful – she doesn’t look like a 20-year-old. She looks like a great-looking woman in her 50s. I think that’s what we should all be aspiring to.

“Surgery is not going to improve your skin – all it’s going to do is make you look tighter like Joan Rivers!

“There’s a lot of pressure to look like something you’re not and it’s really depressing.”

For that reason Marie says she won’t touch Botox. “Doing the kind of job I do you need to be able to move your face.”

She also reveals she was dismayed to read that Selina Scott, 57, believes she was dumped by Channel Five for being “too old”.

“It’s ridiculous,’ she frowns. “Selina, she’s a beautiful woman and smart and knows her job. I know Moira Stuart as well, another beautiful woman. It does seem stupid to me. Why can’t there be women of all ages represented on TV?”

Earlier this week new model on the block Alice Dellal was pictured next to what appears to be drug paraphernalia.

Recalling the days she was offered cocaine, Marie says she steered clear but dabbled with marijuana.

“I was married to someone [Bailey] who was very anti-drugs,” she reveals. “I liked smoking grass, but it drove him up the wall. He hated it so much, but for me it was part of my culture back home in Hawaii.

“Cocaine was never something I got into because when you live with a photographer you’re constantly on show to them. He was constantly looking at or photographing me.

“It was not a big thing for me or the models I knew. We were much too concerned about our looks.”

And those looks allowed her to date, and even turn down, a host of famous men. Marie smiles when asked which of her former lovers – Marco Pierre White, David Bailey, Peter Gabriel, Eric Clapton and Warren Beatty – she recalls most fondly.

“Well, I loved Bailey dearly and I’m still very close to him. And Marco, we’re still friends – I’m seeing him tomorrow evening. But I haven’t seen Peter in years. Eric, I definitely don’t see!”

Indeed Eric received a less than glowing write-up in her book Marie Helvin: The Autobiography (Phoenix, £8.99) including revelations about their on/off and at times heated affair. But is he cross about the book?

“I don’t know and I couldn’t care less,” she laughs. “When you decide to do a book at this age, what’s the point if you’re not going to tell the truth? Honesty frees you. It gets rid of a lot of baggage.”

Right now Marie, who is a willowy 5ft 9in, is concerned about her weight which has plummeted since her mother died last year.

“I am 8st 7lb and very slim at the moment,” she admits. “When my mom died I just lost my entire appetite. According to my doctor it’s something to do with adrenaline screwing up my metabolism.

“I’m having transfusions of vitamins and nutrients through a needle in my arm to boost my immune system.”

The death of her beloved mother Linda from a brain tumour last September has hit Marie hard and she confides that she is struggling to cope.

“I’m not dealing with it very well,” she says, her voice breaking. “It’s hard as I was really, really close to her. I miss her so much.

“At the moment I’m dealing with it by not dealing with it. I’ve had to put it away in a box inside my head with a notice saying, ‘To be opened at a later date.’ However, I am going to see a bereavement counsellor.

“When my sister Suzon died in 1978 (in a bicycling accident) I never did, but I’m definitely going to see one as soon as I have time.

“I don’t want to burden friends or family members. I’m seeing a healer and she’s been very helpful to me. There’s no shortcut, I don’t think going through it makes you stronger. We’re all vulnerable. Each death or passing is different.”

Yet despite the family tragedy, Marie is still enjoying life.

She reveals that since she recently ended a two-month relationship with an Italian man she’s back in the game and looking for love.

“It was short and sweet,” she says. “He was very nice. He didn’t work in the business and he didn’t live here which was great. I flew out to see him and he came out here once.

“I’m very happy it’s over as it wasn’t going anywhere. So I’m back on the market and dating.”

Good-looking chaps in their 50s should form an orderly queue here…

- Stop is priced at £396 and available exclusively at Selfridges during September. For information visitwww.stop-age.com